Some of the nation’s rich are letting AI teach their kids
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- Forge Prep and Alpha School are charging families tens of thousands of dollars to replace traditional schooling with AI tutors and "interactive project-based workshops," turning their students into beta testers for unproven technology.
- Silicon Valley has been a major early adopter of the AI-education model, with venture capitalists leading enrollment.
- Shaun Johnson, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist, told the Wall Street Journal he plans to enroll his son in Alpha Kindergarten at a cost of $75,000 per year, saying he wants his child to "think on his feet and navigate the world, not necessarily a recitation of facts."
- Alpha School co-founder MacKenzie Price has said she plans to keep "hot-button social issues" out of the classroom — a policy that could extend to women's rights, America's history of slavery, and immigration, depending on how such issues are defined.
- Alpha School operates through high school in some locations, meaning the social-issue exclusion policy would apply to students well beyond kindergarten.
- Forge and similar AI-guided schools do not publish performance metrics, leaving no public evidence that the AI-driven approach improves educational outcomes compared to traditional schools.
Why it matters: Wealthy parents are committing up to $75,000 per year per child to schools with no published performance data, while one prominent program's founder has stated plans to exclude topics like slavery and women's rights from curricula through high school — effectively turning affluent families into paying beta testers for an unproven model that could influence broader K-12 education if it scales.
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